May 31, 2012

Here's an interview of Stallone by Access Hollywood, where the action legend reveals his experience on the set of EX2 with Schwarzenegger and that he's still doing his own stunts. He still impresses the hell out of me!

It was about time, we were starting to get bored of
lack of news. The EX2 TV Spot is here and has a few new scenes that were
not seen in the official or teaser trailers. I specially like the scene
with Schwarzenegger & Willis standing together and of course the
one where the 3 action legends are shooting their guns, well there is
also Norris and co.

May 25, 2012

One of the best EX2 fan made trailer has become very popular over the past few days, to the point that Schwarzenegger has suggested on his twitter that it'd become the official trailer for EX2. Whoever (Garrison Dean)made this trailer must be proud of their work, having one of the action legends' support, in the person of Arnold himself, is quite an achievement...

The creator of this trailer is the same person (or group) who drew attention back in 2010 with the creation of a "Call to Arms" spot that declared men needed to get off the couch, go see The Expendables and take back the movie theaters that had been overrun by teenage girls thanks to chick flicks like Twilight and Sex & The City. All the power to you brother...

ET has released their full interview of Stallone & Schwarzengger recorded on the set of The Tomb.

Here's a summary of what these two action legends had to say:

Stallone: "We're just a couple of old war horses talking about the oddest
subjects on the planet. I think in the
beginning we were competitive -- there's no question about it. A little
alpha territorial. And then we realized it was good for our careers [to
work together]."

Schwarzenegger: "The funny thing is we have tried, I think, our entire
careers to always work together. We have talked about it
for three decades and it never happened. I think we tried maybe too
hard. … But now after the governorship, somehow this just fell into
place."

Arnold explains that he worked four hours on the first Expendables, and then expanded to four days on The Expendables 2. "We worked really well together"

Stalone on The Tomb: "This genre unfortunately is
becoming… let's just say it's fading away. You have the
superheroes today which are possessed with all extraordinary powers;
they can blink and a fireball comes out of there. It's great. And then
you have a bunch of us which is just your basic male-pattern badness. …
Kind of like hands-on action."

May 23, 2012

MTV News spoke to Stallone at CinemaCon 2012 and this is what Stallone had to tell them:

On EX2: "We
do up the ante. We have a bit more money," he said. "When people go in
there, at first they say, 'Well, it's not [Robert De Niro's] "Deer
Hunter." ' And I say, 'Of course, it's not "Deer Hunter." It's a bunch
of mugs having a good time and just kicking each other around.' It's
male pattern badness.

"And this one here, because of Arnold, Bruce, [Jean-Claude] Van Damme
and the addition of Liam Hemsworth, we all try to capitalize on sort of
the baggage we bring. You know, we have certain catchphrases and
certain looks and certain things that we've been known for, [especially]
Chuck Norris, so we throw it in there and have fun with it. I think
this one here is gonna be a bit more enjoyable. The scope is quite a bit
larger."

On EX3: he was then asked where would a third
movie go from there? Stallone said he doesn't yet have another team
of thespians in mind for a threequel.

"There's one or two, but
there's not enough to do a whole [movie]," he said. "There are guys who
are good, but they're not of that ilk. It's very odd that becoming an
action guy is kind of like the ugly stepchild, like, 'Oh, you didn't
make it.' It's very hard, because if you notice, there's only been about
six action guys in my lifetime that have somewhat made it, because it's
a very odd, odd combination. Guys have to be somewhat entertaining.
It's not about muscles, per se."

On Rambo V: Stallone further added that there's another story in his beloved "Rambo" series yet to come.

"There's
a volcanic eruption for Rambo. The magma of Rambo is coming to the
surface," he said. "I know there is [another story]. You know when you
lay down the final culmination of your life and you can articulate it,
but also act on it, and he realizes what his destiny really is. And it's
not to be a farmer, it's not to be obscure, it's really to go out in a
blaze of glory — in a heroic fashion. But is he really doing it for
himself or is he doing it because that's just his id? That's just who he
is?"

May 21, 2012

A new series of on set photos of The Tomb have shown up. Apparently The Tomb is being filmed at the NASA - Michoud Assembly Facility which was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's External Tanks. The facility is now being used for commercial purposes.

May 20, 2012

This picture was posted on the arnoldfans.com forum. It was taken on the set of The Tomb showing Stallone & Schwarzenegger in their prisoner outfit. This is how they will look in the movie, interestingly cool!

May 14, 2012

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, the world's foremost
authority on structural security. He's analyzed nearly every high
security prison. After being framed by persons unknown, all of Breslin's
ingenuity and expertise are about to be put to work in the most
challenging test he's ever faced: escaping from a high-tech prison
facility that's design is based on his own protocols.

Schwarzenegger plays Emil Rottmayer, a complex inmate with
multiple shades of gray. He's the guy who fights to keep the prisoners
from losing their humanity in their darkest hour as they struggle
together to stay alive.

Jim Caviezel plays Hobbes, the warden of the Tomb. This is the type
of prison facility that deals with inmates that no government wants on
its books.

Vinnie Jones plays the lead guard of the maximum-security facility, Drake.

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson plays Hush, Ray Breslin's right-hand man and
high-technology expert. Buttoned-down with street lurking just below
the surface, Hush is aptly named because when he speaks, it is just
above a whisper...but it's a whisper with attitude and edge that can
turn from soft to drop dead serious in the blink of an eye.

Vincent
D'Onofrio plays Lester Clark, Breslin's business partner and CEO of
B&C Security, their independent security company hired by the
Federal Bureau of Prisons to test the integrity of their
maximum-security facilities nationwide.

Barney Ross
(Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunner
Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry
Crews) -- with newest members Timmons (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan)
aboard -- are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables
to take on a seemingly simple job. The
task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school
mercenaries. But when things go wrong
and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek
revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath
of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an
unexpected threat in the nick of time — six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium,
enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that's nothing compared to the justice
they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their
brother.

That is done the
Expendables way....

From Lionsgate and
Millennium Films, THE EXPENDABLES 2, a film by Simon West, is the highly
anticipated sequel to the summer 2010 worldwide box-office success ($274
million worldwide). The film stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li,
Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with
newest cast members Liam Hemsworth, Scott Adkins, martial arts legends Chuck
Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme, and Chinese actress Yu Nan as the first
female EXPENDABLE. The film is directed
by Simon West. Screenplay by Richard
Wenk and Sylvester Stallone. Story by Ken Kaufman & David Agosto and Richard
Wenk. Based on Characters Created by David Callaham. The film is produced by Avi Lerner, Kevin
King Templeton, Danny Lerner and Les Weldon.
Jon Feltheimer, Jason Constantine, Eda Kowan, Basil Iwanyk and Guymon
Casady serve as Executive Producers along with Danny Dimbort, Boaz Davidson and Trevor Short. Lionsgate and
Millennium Films present a Nu Image production.

May 12, 2012

Schwarzenegger will probably wear a Goatee for The Tomb. A number of pictures taken yesterday during his daughter's graduation show him wear a Goatee and knowing that he's been on the set of The Tomb since May 6, it's very likely that he's wearing the facial hair for the movie. In any case he looks rejuvenated and in very good form.

There seems to be a new poster that has been going around in Sweden thru movie websites in that country. I'm not sure if it's the official Swedish poster of EX2 but a few movie websites in Sweden have picked it up (moviezine, SF). The interesting thing is that the cast is completely billed differently from the rest of the world. Schwarzenegger comes before Stallone and Willis. And Lundgren (being Swedish) comes before Statham and Li and the rest. Also interesting to note that Adkins is billed here whereas he hasn't been on any North American posters.

May 7, 2012

This is the review of "The Tomb" script dating back to a year ago, when it was still called the "Exit Plan" and Willis was advanced as the lead actor. Schwarzenegger had also shown interest in the movie at the time. As we know now, the lead role ended up going to Stallone and the script has also been modified, we don't know to what extent though. The character called Church is now called Swan and Schwarzenegger actually ended up signing up for that role.

The following summary was written by a fellow who has a blog where he writes his reviews of different movie scripts. Spoiler Alert!!

"The Tomb starts in a top level prison with a felon named Ray Breslin, a hard-ass
with an attitude problem – Breslin appears to be a little brighter than the rest of
the rats in this cage, and we soon figure out that he’s planning an escape.
After getting himself thrown into isolation, he cleverly creates a fire raid
which allows him to sneak out of the prison as one of the firefighters.

Cut to Breslin in an office – receiving a check. Breslin
does this for a living. He gets hired to go into prisons under aliases and
designs an escape meant to expose security flaws. And Ray does the job every
single time.

Suffice it to say, he wants a challenge. But his handlers remind him that he’s
broken out of every major prison in the U.S. There aren’t any challenges left.
What about internationally, he asks. And that’s where things get interesting.
There’s a mysterious businessman who wants to pay for Breslin’s services for a
secret prison, one that’s so far off the map and so top secret, that he won’t
know of its location until he gets there. Breslin can’t sign on the dotted line
fast enough.

Big mistake.

After being drugged and thrown into the jail, Breslin realizes that this is
unlike any jail he’s ever seen. Cells are stacked on top of each other and see
through, with a ring-shaped platform allowing guards to see everyone at all
times. Escape demands privacy. Here, there is none. But it gets worse. The
warden, a bloodless man named Roman Steffes (now changed to Willard Hobbes), doesn’t seem to know who Breslin
is. Which means Breslin’s failsafe, being able to tell the warden his real
identity, is off the table. And the topper? Breslin finds building schematics
based on his OWN STUDY OF PRISONS. This prison was built specifically to
withstand every weakness Breslin has ever found in a prison.

Breslin’s only ally is a quick-witted man named Church (now changed to Swan), who rightfully thinks
Breslin’s crazy for even mentioning escape. It’s impossible. Plus Church has
his own set of problems. He seems to know one of the most notorious terrorists
in the world, and therefore is being watched 24/7 by the guards. How will
Breslin ever break out of here, much less with this attention-grabbing buddy of
his? And where is “here” anyway?

Yesterday
was all about the characters. The inner journey is what drove the story. Here,
it’s the plot that’s the star. It’s the twists and turns and surprises and
reversals that keep you reading, and boy are there a couple of doozys. I’ve
read a lot of scripts, so it takes a lot to trick me or make me wonder what’s
going to happen next. And while I definitely had some suspicions, I was
genuinely surprised a few times. There’s a late 3rd act reveal in particular
that I did not see coming, and it was a good one.

What’s cool about The Tomb though is that it still cares about its characters.
Breslin is someone with
a real past, believable motivation, and crippling flaws. Breslin’s parents were
murdered when he was younger and the killers were able to escape prison.
Breslin’s set on the bad guys never finding a way out again. And that’s why he
does what he does. It’s a great reminder that you can come up with a cool idea
for a movie, but you still have to make the hero interesting enough that some
bankable star will want to play him.

There’s a lot of writing skill on display here for an action flick actually. I took
note of this towards the end, as in every action thriller, you want to up the
stakes to draw out the most amount of tension and excitement possible. If the
stakes and the time frame are the same as what they were in the second act,
then there’s no real difference between then and now, and the third act
fizzles. So in
the third act of The Tomb, Roman meets with Breslin and gives him 24 hours to
get the location of Church’s terrorist buddy, or he’s going to keep Breslin in
this prison on 24 hour surveillance for the rest of his life. From that moment
on, the story takes on a considerable amount of urgency. And it’s all because
the writer knew he had to up the stakes in the third act.

Another great thing about the script is just how impossible it makes Breslin’s
mission seem. Again, this is what writing action-thrillers is about. You want
to make the hero’s goal seem as impossible as you can so it looks like there’s
no way to succeed. You do that and we’ll be at the edge of our seats the whole
time. In The Tomb, there’s never any privacy for the prisoners. The warden
doesn’t care about Breslin’s real identity. The prison was built specifically
to hold him in. The location makes an escape impossible. I mean, we really have
no idea how he’s going to pull this off, and that’s what makes each step he
takes so dramatically compelling.

I’ve always liked these
“get paid to go in and find faults in a company” films and doing it for a
prison seemed like a logical extension of the idea. The added hook of placing
Breslin in an impossible-to-escape-from prison where his secret status no
longer mattered, was likewise a nice twist. Plot-wise, this was perfectly
paced. And I loved the unexpected twist at the end. Easily one of the better
“escape” scripts I’ve read in a long time."

Adkins finally gets his own character poster for the EX2. The studios seem to have listened to fans and specially to our friend Mike who has made his own versions of the Adkins poster. It's a smart marketing move on their part as Adkins is very popular with a good number of EX2 fans.

Sadistic henchman Hector (martial arts champion Scott Adkins) is quick with a blade and loyal to the cause… a menacing combo. Expectations are set...

May 6, 2012

This is a revision of EX2 Blog's "Anatomy of the EX2 Plot" taking into account additional clues gathered from more recent interviews given by Lundgren & Couture, set photos, the official synopsis and the latest trailer. This is pure speculation on our part
and is not the official plot of EX2 in any shape or form. It might be long but worth the read for the hardcore fans.

Opening Sequence, Rescue Mission in Asia:

Lundgren has hinted more than once that EX2 opens with a mission where the EX team rescues Schwarzenegger from
some place in Asia (rumor has Burma). Schwarzenegger's prisoner outfit
and bloody face seen in the very early set photos further strengthen the foregoing statement.

The official trailer also gives us new images where the EXs are seen to escape thru a jungle by carrying someone (possibly Schwarzenegger), before we see Stallone & Statham faced with some Asian soldiers. In both trailer images below, we can clearly see two cables, sliding Stallone & Statham on one side, and in order Couture, Crews, possibly Lundgren (carrying Schwarzenegger) and Li on the other side. Hemsworth is not seen up in the air since we see him later as the sniper awaiting Stallone's signal to shoot the Asian soldiers after Stallone & Statham land on their feet.

Most of the scenes in the jungle must have been filmed
in Bulgaria; Statham, Hemsworth & Couture, all seen in the jungle
sequence did not film any scenes in Hong Kong where Li's scenes were
shot. Yu does not seem to be part of the Asian mission. I believe she enters the team for the next mission probably replacing Li.

It is fair to assume that Li takes part of the rescue mission as another image in the trailer shows him fight some other Asian dudes.

What happens to him in this mission or after is not very clear. He only filmed 4 days in Hong Kong, nothing in Bulgaria nor in New Orleans. He only appears to be part of the mission in Asia and probably not or very little in the mission that follows in Eastern Europe which we explore in the next section.

Church's Mission in Eastern Europe, Till the EX Kill

After the EXs come back from Asia, Church sends Stallone and his team to a new mission in Eastern Europe to bring back a package, it is said to be an easy one.

But things go wrong and one of their own is killed.

Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Crews, Couture, Hemsworth & Yu are all in this mission. Statham, Couture & Lundgren won't die as they have hinted to their possible participation in EX3. Crews, probably not, maybe at the end?

As for Li there are two possibilities: he either declines to follow Stallone in Eastern Europe after the rescue mission in Asia. Or he does follow the team but is killed early in the mission by Van Damme. The second assumption is less likely but still very possible. We still don't know for sure if Van Damme was only in Hong Kong by coincidence or did actually film a fight scene with Li. In either case Yu seems to be replacing him in Eastern Europe.

Although Li's fate is not 100% clear, we now know for sure that Hemsworth is killed by Van Damme or his men. The clues are very strong now. He was kicked by Van Damme on set, we saw a picture where he is bloody, he is no longer seen in the trailer with the EXs when Stallone says the now famous "find them, kill them", and not seen in the scenes where the EXs fight Van Damme's army wearing their black commando outfits. Needless to say that he did not film any scenes for the final battle at the airport either.

The mystery around Rourke: the EX team filmed a few scenes in New Orleans. They are said to be those where they gather before they leave for their mission, Carpenter was also there as Statham's girlfriend in the movie. There are rumors and speculation that Rourke was also there when all that happened. Some believe that Tool still dies and Rourke has a secret cameo where this all happens. Just a parenthesis as I don't have any facts to back this up.

Church's Mission in Eastern Europe, After the EX Kill

The mission was not as easy as they thought. One of their own (or maybe two) got viciously killed. The package they were sent to fetch fell in the hands of the wrong guys. So It's time for revenge and to stop Van Damme from his evil plan. This is where all the big fights, explosions, etc happen.

Things don't go as well, Van Damme's army is stronger than expected and Stallone and his crew are not able to overcome the challenge on their own. Willis, Schwarzenegger and Norris fly to their rescue.

Closing Sequence, Final Battle at the Airport

It seems that we'll see Norris in two different sequences of the movie. I believe that he first flies to EXs rescue where they have a fight scene in an old town in their plain clothes before they go commando for the airport scene. Norris had two series of pictures where the EX team appeared on 2 different sets and in 2 different outfits.

We should also see Norris at the airport (seen in the trailer and below) where Willis & Schwarzenegger also join the fight.

The final battle at the airport is now very well established, many
pictures and images from the trailer have been attesting to that. The
finale is said to be one of the best action scenes in the history of
action movies, reuniting Stallone, Willis & Schwarzenegger in one
shot firing their guns.

The cherry on the cake is of course the one-on-one fight between Stallone & Van Damme. I let you guess the rest.

May 2, 2012

Lundgren has released a video message on his Facebook page that dates back to early December where he explains his role and some of the challenges of the movie, how funnier it will be this time around and more charming characters.

At the time this video was taped he was 2 weeks from finishing the shooting in Bulgaria. He confirms that the shooting in China that took place in January was indeed for the opening sequences of the movie where Li was also part of, therefore confirming our theory that Li is only part of the Burma mission.